Artist and housetruck fan launches exhibition

During the winter months, Luane Brauner’s sensual depictions of local characters, pets and landscapes, in oil and acrylics, pastels and watercolours, can be viewed at the Dangerous Kitchen Café over a steaming cup of coffee.

Luane moved to Golden Bay from East Germany two years ago and has since joined the local art scene, painting portraits and commissioned works.
“Golden Bay fascinates me: it is the friendliness of the people and the many layers of the society, from conservative to the alternative; it is all possible and acceptable. Then there is the wide range of art and artists which makes life here so interesting, and then of course the beauty of the physical environment is inspiring.”

Housetrucks in particular have captured her imagination, and Luane has decided to work towards a book with her own paintings and text on the trucks and housetrucking culture.
“When I came to New Zealand, I was amazed by housetrucks and the lifestyle that comes with them. It was so unusual, and New Zealand is probably one of the few countries where people are still allowed to drive these home-made trucks around.” The self-taught painter began her creative process by full immersion, and bought herself a beautifully restored housetruck which functions both as her home and studio. “I cannot write a book about it if I don’t experience what it is like to live in one.”
Luane has always been interested in art, saying she “came into the world like this”.

“As a teenager I painted portraits of rock bands onto T-shirts and sold them to earn some pocket money.” When Luane began painting full-time 20 years ago, while living with her family in an isolated house surrounded by forest, art materials were still in short supply in East Germany, and she only had time to paint after the children were tucked up in bed. Later she began to give art lessons, which she intends to do again after a short visit to the northern hemisphere.
In the meantime, Luane can be contacted via email on <l.brauner@gmx.de>.

Ina Holst (22 May 2009)

Gillian Jackson recalls climbing adventures

“Once you’ve looked death in the face there is nothing left to be feared,” says Collingwood resident Gillian Jackson, reflecting on the courage she mustered some 60 years ago that enabled her to climb steep summits, struggle up icy glaciers and risk being swamped by avalanches and rockfalls. “Of course we had no helmets in those days, or safety gear; we just climbed it.”

At an illustrated talk at the library last week, Gillian, now aged 80, singlehandedly entertained lovers of the outdoors with humorous anecdotes about her climbing days, and left everybody in awe as she showed her breathtaking black-and-white slides and hauled out kilos of climbing equipment—polished ice-picks, the heavy japare (a kind of oil cloth), the metal crampons kept on a wooden board, the sisal ropes and the solid backpack.

“We had no lightweight materials in those days and our mountain mules and crampons were quite a bit different from nowadays’ equipment. There were no boots made then for women climbers either, and I had to wear schoolboy’s boots, which were just like cardboard. I never did a trip without thousands of blisters and I lost my toenails several times,” she told the gathered crowd. “Out tent had no floor and we had to lay on the bare rocks or we had rock bivvys and only our sleeping bag covers for shelter. I loved the old huts, but so many of the dear little huts have disappeared now.”

Read more on the GB Weekly site .....

Ina Holst (27 August 2009)

Local runner returns from Kalahari Desert marathon

Averill Turnbull surely looks like a long-distance runner. Lean, long-limbed and strong, Averill has just returned from the Kalahari Augrabies Extreme Marathon held in early October.

Running 237km across the African desert in seven days, in temperatures of 40° Celsius, was a challenging yet deeply satisfying adventure, said Averill.
“It was my first multi-day event and I want to go back next year. It was very dry and hot during the race, although we had a thunderstorm the day before. Last year it was 10 degrees hotter, and 30 per cent of the runners did not make it, so this year it was quite a ‘cold event’. I wanted to see how I go in the heat and I trained really well for it by running in three thermal layers and a goosedown jacket and sitting in the sauna afterwards. The training was actually worse than the event.”

Averill was the only New Zealander among 73 participants from 12 different countries who started the 10th desert marathon this year. It is a self-sufficiency race, where runners have to carry everything needed for the entire trip, including food. The race is run over six legs in seven days with set distances for each day, ranging from 28 to 82km and through varied terrain. The 250km route was suddenly shortened to 237km as an area under a land claim had to be avoided, and the runners had to be evacuated from the vicinity during the night.

Read more on the GB Weekly site .....

Ina Holst (5 November 2009)